If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

If Thy News of the World Offend Thee…

…Pluck it out, and cast it from thee.

Mark 9, 47

News of the World

You know … everyone knows … Rupert Murdoch is an evil genius. And this latest move is certainly worthy of his deep-seated amorality. If Murdoch believes in anything he believes in two things: nothing and money.

His latest move is pure evil genius at his best, perfectly amoral and perfectly greedy.

The “red-top” News of the World was a lightning rod for all that is awful about Murdoch’s evil empire, his willingness not simply to condone – even apparently (at least to Sir Roger) to encourage – unethical journalism (as long as there is money in it) and unethical business practice (if there is money in it), but also to ignore the certainty of the toxic and socially destructive effects his work brings to the world. If there is money in it (see, for example, Fox News and Roger Ailes).

Is Murdoch personally responsible for the harm and hurt he brings to the world? After all, he’s just a businessman and not personally involved in the day to day journalistic decisions of his staff.

If there is one thing Sir Roger has learned in his long years it is this: the nature of an organisation, the culture, the ethical sense, the attitudes, the mood, that pervade and really influence and direct the behaviour of all the people who work within it, spring from just one source and that is its leader.

Everything in an organisation is a reflection of who – and what – the leader is. In a school, that’s the Principal. In a company, it’s the boss. And the News of the World with all its foulness, dishonesty, greed, inhumanity and deceit is a direct reflection of Murdoch. It’s inescapable because who he is as a man influences every part of what and whom he leads.

News of the World had become a huge and easy target for attacking the Murdoch empire generally. So what Murdoch has done is to remove the target. Now there is nothing to shoot at. News of the World had become a floodlit monument to all the real reasons why Murdoch and his megacorp would not be fit and proper controllers of a huge and influential satellite television company.

“What do you mean? What newspaper? I don’t see any so-called ‘News of the World‘.

No NoW, no NoW staff. Do they keep the documents? Or shred them (you know, for commercial-in-confidence reasons)? Can they be sued? For example, by Milly Dowler’s parents or any number of celebrities and politicians?

Murdoch has sacked hundreds (presumably) of staff at NoW. Not too much sympathy there for people who were willing to sell their souls for a shiny penny and the privilege of shitting into the same sewer as the Great Hero.

But he hasn’t sacked the one person he ought to have: the ex-Editor – in the big seat when much of the worst phone-tapping was going on – who is now Chief Executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks.

He can’t fire her, of course, or release her to the wolves (unless there’s money in it) because she is, like the now arrested and out-on-bail Coulson, another magnificent product of the Murdoch School of Business and Journalistic Ethics, the arsepaper-previously-known-as-News-of-the-World.

Murdoch has done all this not out of ethics or integrity or even shame, or even to protect the “good name” of his companies. It is to try to protect his attempt to obtain control of BSkyB and if people get hurt? Too bad.

As we know, but just to remind ourselves, the row over the News of the World was re-ignited this week when it was revealed that it had paid people to hack into the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was murdered in 2002.

How must Louise Casey, Commissioner for Victims and Witnesses, feel?

Last Sunday, 3 July, under a bellowing, finger-wagging News of the World article [IN DEFENCE OF DIGNITY – opposite a picture of a sexy girl showing not quite so much dignity as breast] moralistically slamming “ruthless lawyers” for berating murder victims’ families “in the wake of the Milly Dowler trial”, “the nightmare ordeal faced by thousands of witnesses and innocent victims of crime” and “the shameful treatment of Bob and Sally Dowler”, she wrote in NoW:

“ Many of us felt such compassion for the brave family of Milly Dowler and anger at the way they were treated in court.
Sadly for me, although I was shocked and appalled, I wasn’t surprised.
When I started working for the rights of victims I thought I was unshockable. But what I have found over the last year has made my jaw drop.
Like most people I assumed that families who, like the Dowlers, have had their lives ripped apart by criminals, would get all the help they need….
What I discovered is they are often not given the support, care or consideration they deserve. Many are still treated as if they are an “inconvenience”, and this can make their grief worse…..
…They deserve to be treated with humanity, dignity and most of all a bit of respect.
So when my report comes out about the treatment of families like these, I ask that you be shocked too…

The next day, 4 July, the story broke in the Guardian that Scotland Yard had discovered Milly Dowler’s voicemail had been hacked by journalists and private investigators of the newspaper Louise Casey had so helpfully and passionately contributed to. They had deleted messages – potential evidence – to free up space for more juicy messages. The deletions misled family and friends into thinking that Milly was still alive.

We bet Louise Casey’s jaw really did drop when she saw that. They probably had to give her smelling salts to bring her round. And a bucket for her shame.

The worst that can happen to Murdoch is probably much too little and now almost too late, for the wrinkled old caricature of (or perhaps inspiration for) Emperor Palpatine, as retribution for the global damage he has done to civil society, let alone the personal grief he has caused during his foul, oh-so-long (and, to an Australian, deeply embarrassing) career. It would be easy to wish there really were a hell for him to be consigned to, “into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched”. Wikipedia says he’s Catholic, but he probably thinks god works for him.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
Oh, I dunno, about $US8 Billion?

Late Breaking:

The Guardian newspaper is now also reporting an executive from News International – News Corp’s UK wing – has deleted four or five years worth of emails between staff and their bosses. Might that be illegal? Given the police investigation? Perverting the course of justice (well, British law, anyway, which increasingly is an ass)?

And Brooks told angry staff on Friday, “Yes, we’re in a very bad moment but we will continue to invest in journalism.”

Her logical error is that to “continue” to do something you must already have been doing it.

 

STOP PRESS:

Alison Frankel on the Reuters website says,

“ …Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper — even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.

If News of the World is to be liquidated, [British media law star Mark] Stephens told Reuters, it

“ is a stroke of genius — perhaps evil genius.”

Ah, validation is so satisfying…

 

David Hume

David Hume

. . . and so to the democracy that we enjoy today

David Hume, hero of the Enlightenment, father of skepticism, linchpin of democracy and human rights and freedoms,

Happy 300th Birthday! 

 

Sir Roger has some slight understanding of how Hume felt when he said this:

“ Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

Although the great Hume had many antecessors and successors his work in its clarity, rigour and accessibility was crucial to the flourishing of the Scottish Enlightenment and therefore to the rights and freedoms, to the political and social foundations – and so to the democracy – that we enjoy today.

Our system is not obvious and it is not “natural”. It is better than any other so far tested but it could disappear in a moment if we take our eye off it, if we do not cherish it and care for it and fight for it. As they say in another context, “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

“ Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.

In fact, the price of freedom is internal vigilance.

There are those who dream of its collapse – not only those who want a caliphate but also those who wish to arrogate power to themselves, those who arrogantly believe they have greater wisdom and greater value than others, those who feel entitled to rule . . .

“ It is seldom, that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. Slavery has so frightful an aspect to men accustomed to freedom, that it must steal upon them by degrees, and must disguise itself in a thousand shapes, in order to be received. But, if the liberty of the press ever be lost, it must be lost at once. The general laws against sedition and libelling are at present as strong as they possibly can be made. Nothing can impose a farther restraint, but either the clapping an Imprimatur upon the press, or the giving to the court very large discretionary powers to punish whatever displeases them. But these concessions would be such a bare-faced violation of liberty, that they will probably be the last efforts of a despotic government.

. . . and those (some in one of our mainstream political parties) who dream of a latterday christian theocracyIt is these people, invariably committed christians and most often “practising catholics”, whom you will hear increasingly – and chillingly – talking about the “failure of the Enlightenment” and the “failed ‘experiment’ of democracy”.

Hume, prophetically, has something to say about them as well.

“ In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

Survey most nations and most ages. Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men’s dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape, than the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational.

Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them.

And so Sir Roger recommends the following on David Hume’s 300th birthday:

“ Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous…A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

Happy Birthday, and thank you, David Hume!

 

Assange – Wanted: Dead or Dead

Assange – Wanted: Dead or Dead

 

“Why wasn’t Assange garroted years ago?”

 

Sir Roger had thought that there was a limited number of people who had urged or advocated the murder/assassination/execution of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange.

Two people had stood out particularly – Canadian Professor Tom (“Obama should put out a contract”) Flanagan and US Army Lt-Col. Ralph (“Assange should be killed”) Peters.

Now he discovers there is a small website where you can find a much larger number of people involved in what looks to Sir Roger a lot like incitement to murder.

It’s “People OK With Murdering Assange“.

So it’s the usual suspects except it’s not all FoxNews or crackpot Republicans (but I repeat myself).

Australian terrorism law defines a terrorist act as

“an action done or a threat made with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause including the intention of intimidating the public or a section of the public and where the action causes serious physical harm to a person or causes a person’s death, or endangers a person’s life.”

Advocating a terrorist act means directly or indirectly counselling the doing of a terrorist act, or directly or indirectly providing instruction on the doing of the terrorist act.

The US Code of Federal Regulations defines terrorism as

“…the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives”.

The UN General Assembly resolved (non-bindingly) that

…Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them…

So in general…

…surveying the various academic definitions of terrorism, Vallis concluded that:

  • “Most of the formal definitions of terrorism have some common characteristics:

    a fundamental motive to make political/societal changes;

  • the use of violence or illegal force; attacks on civilian targets by “nonstate”/”Subnational actors”;

  • and the goal of affecting society. This finding is reflected in Blee’s listing of three components of terrorism:

1. Acts or threats of violence;

2. The communication of fear to an audience beyond the immediate victim, and;

3. Political, economic, or religious aims by the perpetrator(s).”

See if you can discern the vaguest hint of any sentiment or intent described in the definitions above, in any of the following statements made in the American media.

 

BOB BECKEL – FOX News commentator

“A dead man can’t leak stuff…This guy’s a traitor, he’s treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I’m not for the death penalty, so…there’s only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch.”

Reading this over very carefully, one is wondering whether a person can be a traitor to a country of which he is not a citizen and wondering, too, whether it’s actually possible for one individual to break absolutely every law of a country with 50 states and numerous territories, and indeed how a Fox News “analyst” could have completely examined the facts of Assange’s life in relation to every single law of the United States – civil, criminal and corporate – and come to his conclusion so swiftly.

One is left only in awe of such an intellect. And yet one struggles to grasp the logic of a person who is “not for” the death penalty nevertheless advocating the intentional punishment of a person with death by gunfire. But perhaps one is indeed dwarfed by genius and can never hope to comprehend the product of such an advanced intelligence.

  

ERIC BOLLING – FOX News commentator

“[Assange] should be underground — six feet underground. … He should be put in jail or worse, hanged in a public forum.”

 

 JOHN HAWKINS – townhall.com

“5 Reasons The CIA Should Have Already Killed Julian Assange

[ … ]

” … there’s no reason that the CIA can’t kill him. Moreover, ask yourself a simple question: If Julian Assange is shot in the head tomorrow or if his car is blown up when he turns the key, what message do you think that would send … ?”

Sounds a lot like advice – instruction, even – on how to carry out an act, do you think?

 

RUSH LIMBAUGH

“Back in the old days when men were men and countries were countries, this guy would die of lead poisoning from a bullet in the brain.”

Just wondering … does this bring a flutter of recognition? Why does Sir Roger have flashes of Dallas? Tucson?

RUSH LIMBAUGH

“(laughing) Ah, folks, even Greg Palkot of Fox News interviewed Assange, which means that Roger Ailes knows where he is. Ailes knows where Assange is. Give Ailes the order and there is no Assange, I’ll guarantee you, and there will be no fingerprints on it.”

 

WILLIAM KRISTOL Chairman, New Citizenship Project 1997 to 2005, co-founder Project for the New American Century (PNAC), board member of Keep America Safe, a think tank co-founded by Liz Cheney and Debra Burlingame, board member of the Emergency Committee for Israel.

“Why can’t we act forcefully against WikiLeaks? Why can’t we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?”

You gotta love the political sophistication of the guy who fought so hard to get the “Coalition” into Iraq to root out those pesky weapons of mass destruction at the cost of only several hundred thousand lives.

 

G. GORDON LIDDY – Former White House Adviser

“This fellow Anwar al-Awlaki – a joint U.S. citizen hiding out in Yemen – is on a ‘kill list’ [for inciting terrorism against the U.S.]. Mr. Assange should be put on the same list.”

Sir Roger is musing whether Mr Liddy would therefore logically agree that all people whose statements and actions coincide with the generally agreed definitions of advocating terrorist acts ought to be on the same list? But no, Sir Roger fears that Liddy and the others in this list would subscribe to the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

 

JOHAN GOLDBERG – Editor-at-large of National Review Online

“I’d like to ask a simple question: Why isn’t Julian Assange dead? …Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago? It’s a serious question.

Is it also a serious suggestion?

 

 DONALD DOUGLAS – Right-wing blogger

“I won’t think twice if Julian Assange meets the cold blade of an assassin, and apparently a significant number of others don’t care for the guy.”

Sir Roger wonders if Mr Douglas realises that a prerequisite of thinking twice is to have thought once.

 

 MARC SCHENKER “Vancouver American Politics Examiner” whatever that means

“So if you look at Peters’ call to have Assange killed analytically, it makes a lot of sound sense, and he probably even has a legal footing to stand on.

What might it mean to kill someone ‘analytically’? Would that mean having a pedant bore them to death, Sir Roger wondered pedantically. What might it mean legally for Schenker to be making the suggestion – to who knows which unstable or merely fanatical mind – that a person who followed his exhortations and actually killed Assange would meet with legal approval?

The question is, when it is clear that all of these people are advocating and urging an illegal and potentially terrorist act and, whether or not the act is done they could be charged with offences under US federal and state laws, why has no action been taken or warning given by any legal or political official in the US, or any representations been made by anyone in Australia?

Sir Roger is left after all this with the most disturbing mental image of a mass of men, of advancing age and declining virility, greying hair, bloated bellies, wrinkling skin, sitting in a circle, their pants around their knees, trying to excite their various and reluctant erections, jerking as fast and hard as they possibly can to the pornography of death in a mutual masturbation society.

“God damn, Earl! Ah hain’t bin so hard since the last time we burnt a cross and linched a nigger! Ah think ah might be a-cummin’!”

 

But that’s Sir Roger’s mind for you.

 

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

You Can’t Handle the Truth!

 

… This was a lie and we could not let them publish it …

 

We keep thinking of Jack Nicholson‘s character’s justification for the secrecy that governments and their institutions maintain over their citizens – that is to say, their owners, their employers, the “sovereign people”:

You want The Truth?
You can’t handle The Truth!

It’s the only possible explanation.

Governments and their functionaries can only be thinking that their citizens – who are the actual authority of the State – are incapable of dealing with reality and need to be cotton-wooled, treated like mushrooms if you like, kept in the dark and fed bullshit, to play with their toys and live their fantasy lives while the powerful look after the real games like big boys, as such people have been doing since long before Machiavelli shone his own light on their games.

 

Rep Ron Paul tweets:

“ Re: Wikileaks- In a free society, we are supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, we are in big trouble.

Daniel Ellsberg (re)tweets:

“ For less than $3 you can buy a copy of the Pentagon Papers from Amazon yet they won’t host Wikileaks.”

Here’s what Hillary Clinton said on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square:

“ A China that has made enormous progress economically, and that is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership, should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal.

 

This anniversary provides an opportunity for Chinese authorities to release from prison all those still serving sentences in connection with the events surrounding June 4, 1989. We urge China to cease the harassment of participants in the demonstrations and begin dialogue with the family members of victims, including the Tiananmen Mothers. China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally-recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform.

 

But wait! There’s more! Speaking at the Newseum in January this year she said a lot of fine things about freedom of speech and the internet, and how while it was a great organ of free speech and for good in the world, there were those who were trying to stifle it.

“ On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it.

This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the First Amendment to the Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.

[ … ]

As I speak to you today, government censors are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

[ … ]

As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools.

[ … ]

Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.

And much, much more hypocrisy like this on the foreignpolicy.com website

Clinton should take a good hard look at herself and take a leaf from her own book.

So to help Clinton, let’s repeat Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship, Nelba Blandon’s, statement:

“ They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.

Glenn Greenwald, in his column in Salon disputes The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Capehart’s assertion that there’s nothing new here (and I apologise for reproducing the entire list but please read the whole excellent article).

“ If there’s Nothing New in these documents, can Jonathan Capehart (or any other “journalist” claiming this) please point to where The Washington Post previously reported on these facts, all revealed by the WikiLeaks disclosures:

 

(1) the U.S. military formally adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to systematic, pervasive torture and other abuses by Iraqi forces;

 

(2) the State Department threatened Germany not to criminally investigate the CIA’s kidnapping of one of its citizens who turned out to be completely innocent;

 

(3) the State Department under Bush and Obama applied continuous pressure on the Spanish Government to suppress investigations of the CIA’s torture of its citizens and the 2003 killing of a Spanish photojournalist when the U.S. military fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (see The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch today about this: “The day Barack Obama Lied to me”);

 

(4) the British Government privately promised to shield Bush officials from embarrassment as part of its Iraq War “investigation”;

 

(5) there were at least 15,000 people killed in Iraq that were previously uncounted;

 

(6) “American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world” about the Iraq war as it was prosecuted, a conclusion the Post’s own former Baghdad Bureau Chief wrote was proven by the WikiLeaks documents;

 

(7) the U.S.’s own Ambassador concluded that the July, 2009 removal of the Honduran President was illegal — a coup — but the State Department did not want to conclude that and thus ignored it until it was too late to matter;

 

(8) U.S. and British officials colluded to allow the U.S. to keep cluster bombs on British soil even though Britain had signed the treaty banning such weapons, and,

 

(9) Hillary Clinton’s State Department ordered diplomats to collect passwords, emails, and biometric data on U.N. and other foreign officials, almost certainly in violation of the Vienna Treaty of 1961.

 

That’s just a sampling.

The sadness of this is that it was The Washington Post that stood up so steadfastly and courageously for freedom of speech and truth, supporting Woodward and Bernstein and the independence of the Press against the secrecy and lies and machinations of Washington’s most powerful in the Watergate scandal – from which, of course, “Cablegate” inherits its name.

Meanwhile, where is GetUp on the shocking treatment by the Australian government of Assange, an Australian innocent of any Australian crime but nevertheless pre-emptively accused by both Gillard and McClelland of criminal or at least illegal activity. McClelland:

“ From Australia’s point of view we think there are potentially a number of criminal laws that could have been breached by …… the release of this information.”

For goodness’ sake even Rudd and John Howard agree Assange is not at fault.

“ Mr Rudd appears to be in agreement with former prime minister John Howard, who earlier today said Mr Assange had not done anything wrong by publishing cables that contained ‘frank commentary’.”

The Guardian has a live blog of developments which you can follow including a large amount of support for Assange and the leaking of the (previously) secret documents.

 

 

Wikileaks Cablegate and Hunter S. Thompson

Wikileaks Cablegate and Hunter S. Thompson

 

Hunter S. Thompson said it, and he wasn’t a traitor:

“ America…just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

It needs to be amended to say “… used car salesmen and soccer moms …”

The first thing to say about the WikileaksCablegate” is:

There are no surprises.
We all knew it.
We know they are liars.
We always have known.

It’s like that person who finally works up the courage to make an embarrassing confession, a clean breast of it, and haltingly admits that they have been living a lie, that they’ve been pretending to be one thing but hiding who they really are and what they’re really like. And all their friends say, “Well, duh. Everyone knew that! Tell us something we don’t know.”

We know that all governments spy and have no respect for conventions and even treaties when it doesn’t suit them.

We know what China is like, we know how toxic the Russians are, and how ruthless and ignorant the Chinese government is. We have always known what a dick Berlusconi is and what a wanker Sarkozy is, what an arrogant dork Rudd is, and in one way or another how fucked up almost every country, in the fact the whole world, is if you look at it in certain lights.

So there are no real surprises and the world isn’t about to change.

What has changed, and what all the fuss is really about, is two things:

First, the US Government has lost the most precious protection of a professional liar, plausible deniability.

Second, it’s not true simply that knowledge is power but that secret information is power and the US Government’s secrets are not secret any more.

The US government (amongst others) is exposed, the klieg lights are on and they have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, no escape hatch to fall through in their embarrassment.

So they are making the ridiculous assertion that they have been wronged by being exposed spying on their friends and lying to their own people. They have been backed into a corner and we see the honesty of their snarling teeth.

But how did we know what we know?

It’s no thanks to governments, politicians or bureaucrats, or especially to FoI legislation. It’s not even really thanks to journalists who have known most of this but don’t report most of it, too.

If anything it’s thanks to TV and movie writers. Apparently there’s more truth than we thought in those spy thrillers we imagined were a bit fanciful and exaggerated.

What’s becoming clear is that the Enlightenment was an illusion. We’ve always thought that since the Divine Right of Kings went down the chute and representative democracy took hold, L’êtat is no longer moi and is now The People. There is after all, we have been fooled into believing, no other source of power or authority but The People. No special dispensation from a god, nor from a king.

Under our western-tradition democratic systems – as enshrined in laws and constitutions; as publicly and pompously promoted even by any number of unbearably bloated, unethical, pathologically untruthful power-hungry politicians and money-hungry plutocrats – it is we, we naïvely believed, who own the State and all its power and authority.

Politicians, diplomats, bureaucrats, police and other functionaries (we simple-mindedly thought) are our servants who owe their allegiance to us, as their employers and paymasters. We, we childishly assumed, as the actual owners of the information gathered by our governments, have a right to know that information.

Gullible fools!

In reality the world is governed by political elites, dynastic families and people with carefully nurtured personal and professional connections. The world is ruled by people who have an immovable and deep-as-hell belief in their own privilege and entitlement.

The world is ruled by corporations and vested interests. Probably the biggest vested interests are the world’s militaries and the corporations who rely on them. Reportedly a Pentagon spokesman complained, about news film of Iraqi soldiers killed by helicopter gunfire,

“ If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.”

We, the people, are nauseatingly patronised by narrow minded, morally shallow, easily-bribed, power-mad, status-hungry, greedy people.

Clinton’s, and others’, position seems to be similar to that of Nelba Blandon, Nicaraguan Interior Ministry Director of Censorship:

“ They accused us of suppressing freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not let them publish it.”

Wikileaks’ action is a broadside against an astonishingly powerful and impermeable machine. The intention is in keeping with the professed values of the Enlightenment which are publicly supported by all western-tradition democracies. But the true beliefs of the powerful are on open display around the world with calls for the assassination of Assange, who Republican Senator Mitch McConnell calls a “high-tech terrorist” [get a bloody grip!], the Swedes redefining rape to include the inadvertent breaking of a condom during consensual sex, and any number of politicians, including the awful Gillard woman, calling the publication of the leaks “criminal” and “illegal” when they simply are not. There is plenty of very senior legal opinion explaining in detail why Wikileaks has not done anything illegal>

But Gillard is fawning over the US – who have, by the way, broken international law and convention, undeniably and undenied – to traduce, and to remove protection from, Assange, an Australian national, in just the same way that Howard did with David Hicks.

And so “Australia” in time-honoured fashion is on its knees once again, begging please to suck America’s cock even though we know America despises us (as it does everyone) while telling us (as it tells everyone) it loves us and we’re the only one.

In the meantime the attempts to shut down Wikileaks have suffered from the Streisand Effect and there are now many mirror sites. The current site is available at http://twitter.ch On Twitter Wikileaks is posting news updates at http://twitter.com/#wikileaks You can find more information about the reaction to the leaks at the Wikileaks Facebook page.

So goodnight. Sir Roger leaves you for now with this piece of advice for Hillary Clinton from the Poet of the Enlightenment, Robbie Burns:

Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Thou need na start awa sae hasty,

Wi’ bickering brattle!

UPDATE: Wikileaks posts “Sarah Palin says Julian should be hunted down like Osama bin Laden — so he should be safe for at least a decade.”

At the ABC’s Drum website Kellie Tranter says,

“ Yet a concerted program of personal vilification and an international manhunt continues. After all, hell hath no fury like bruised, frustrated Capitol Hill and Wall Street egos. Do political leaders really believe that Assange is the only person on the planet who wants governments to be open, transparent and accountable? Do they think he’s the only person who understands that our governments are almost pathologically incapable of telling the truth, or that they authorise the commission of despicable acts in our names behind hypocritical calls to freedom and democracy?

As of now (6/12, 7pm AEDT) there are 355 Wikileaks mirror sites, so best of luck with shutting them all down. Or up.

 

 

Update:

Republican 2008 Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said that “anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.” Surely this is criminal incitement to murder given that he has not been charged anywhere in connection with Cablegate and in fact has not broken any laws. Similarly, Mastercard has cut off Wikileaks’ services because it says Wikileaks has been engaging in “illegal activity”. Of course there is no legal basis for Mastercard’s assertion. There is clearly a little pressure and a little leaning on American companies by some powerful people. And, says the Guardian, in Canada ‘ “police are investigating whether there is evidence to proceed against a former adviser to the [Canadian] Prime Minister after he called for Assange to be killed. Tom Flanagan, now a professor at the University of Calgary, suggested on television last week that Assange “should be assassinated, actually”. 

The nature and fierceness of responses by these people throws its own light on the workings of the world and the people who work it.

 


 

Addendum:

While the Wikileaks saga is fascinating and enlightening, and while the case for “the more the merrier” certainly can be made, and that we have a right to the information about our own countries, and that politicians should tell the truth, perhaps we should also take a deep breath, stand back for a moment and ask ourselves whether we are ready for the kind of world in which nothing is secret and politicians are honest.

The emergence of such a world would see a seismic convulsion into confusion and discomfort and therefore perhaps calamity. Somalia anyone?

Are we big enough, grown-up enough, cohesive enough as a community, to manage it? Or have we been cradled and protected from the real world too long, so long that our muscles have become atrophied and we can’t stand up? Are we responsible enough as societies, or are we baby-booming tit-suckers who just want to sit in our playpens with an iPad while mummy sings soothing lullabies and cooks our pre-digested dinner?

 

 

A Brief History of Dog

A Brief History of Dog

 

Clever Brainiac Shorthand

 

The (£1-a-day) Times has released excerpts of Stephen Hawking’s soon to be released new book, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design.

“ The universe can and will create itself from nothing,” he says. “Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

The press are all over Hawking for this, claiming that Hawking used to believe in a god somehow. (You know, they love a good backflip.) The Guardian says:

“ In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text … he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”.

What Hawking said in 1988 was,

“ If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.”

Had seemed to accept“? Sir Roger can understand this conclusion if, as is so often the case with journalists, the writer knows nothing about science or scientists and never actually read the original book. The line about “the mind of God” was the last sentence in the book and very few people got that far. Sir Roger may be one of the few who actually tackled the world’s smallest ever, and least read, coffee table book.

Many journalists are overworked, if not really lazy, and they have to get a readable story out quickly and so they grasp at angles, thoughts, probably get a bit of an idea from something like Wikipedia or their own archives and rush the story through. But when it comes to god stuff they really ought to be a bit more careful.

Scientists are stupid, of course, which is strange because intellectually they tend to be on the smarter side and like to make jokes. They make up clever brainiac shorthand. Remember the University of East Anglia emails and the “trick of adding in the real temps to each series”?

Well, the silly atheist scientists keep talking about gods. The Higgs Boson or “God particle”. Einstein’s “God does not play dice wth the universe”. And Hawking’s “then we should know the mind of God”.

Don’t bloody say that stuff! It just confuses stupid people (and journalists after an angle with an angel). And god-botherers.

So let’s be clear.

Einstein didn’t believe in any god the way other people define it. Higgs is an atheist. Hawking is an atheist (although he may at some stage have been an agnostic deist) and he never meant you to take that last line literally. It was an analogy. Smart scientist shorthand. Okay?

Meanwhile, chief rabbi, Lord Sacks, criticised Hawking’s book. Having complained that science and religion are different (“Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation”) he went on,

“ The Bible simply isn’t interested in how the universe came into being.”

Beg pardon? What was all that stuff in Genesis about? Genesis I, Chapter 1, Verse 1? you know, where god creates the universe? The only part of the Bible that creationists care about??

1    In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2   And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3   And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Explain that again about how the Bible isn’t interested in how the universe came into being?